Meeting Minutes – September 14, 2015

SAA Student Chapter, St. Catherine University

Meeting called to order at 6:00 PM by SAA chapter president Jessica Faucher.

Business

1. Upcoming SAA events

Baaken Archives Tour in Minneapolis @ September 26th, 1pm. Several RSVPs already, and while space on the tour is technically limited, it sounds like they’ll accommodate as many as want to attend.

October is American Archives Month… and October 1st is SAA national’s “AskAnArchivist Day”! Allison had the idea of having some “Ask Me, I’m An Archivist” t-shirts made to wear around campus or to an event.

Deb Torres brought up an event on October 1st held by the Friends of the St Kate’s Library that could be an opportunity for network (and to wear the shirts). Deb also mentioned a possible processing project involving new materials donated to special collections.

2. Future event ideas for the future.

The goal is to have a main event besides the chapter meetings scheduled for every month. Some preliminary ideas:

Archives 101 panel.

October 26th is a tentative date. Four archivist panelists would be an ideal number, so Molly and Jessica will reach out to their professional contacts. Heather Carroll had a potential panelist candidate who she’ll follow up with.

Because of the possible scale of the event, it would likely need to take place later in the year, in November or December.

There was an expressed group interest in doing more archives tours. Jessica invited everyone to send her ideas.

3. Community partnership project.

In lieu of the community partnership project with Mississippi Market, Molly was approached by someone from Warroad Historical Society who had read about the Red Wing pottery museum project from last year, and is interested in the possibility of having a group of St. Kate’s SAA students come out to Warroad to help process some of their collection. The drawback is that it is seven hours away, but there is the possible offer of a charter plane provided to fly students to Warroad and back, and being put up in a large private residence. When put to a vote, almost everyone expressed an interest in pursuing the project so Molly is going to follow up with her contact at WHS.

4. Fundraising

There is a need for a dedicated fundraising committee to plan events. In addition to making use of existing SGO funds, having funds on-hand to send students to SAA conferences is important. There was some discussion of what other student chapters have done, such as craft nights. Chayse Sundt shared the fact that as an undergrad he was involved with fundraising and would be willing to take on that role with this group. Heather Carroll and Allison Spies also volunteered. Deb Torres advised checking first with St. Kate’s administration on whether there are any specific guidelines for student fundraising groups.

There was some additional brief discussion related to fundraising on t-shirt ideas, with archivist mottos (e.g., “Archivists Put It Where The Sun Don’t Shine”), or Margaret Cross Norton shirts.

Jessica queried the group on whether there is interest in repeating the Historically Accurate Costume Party as our end-of-semester event. There wasn’t a clear response.

As far as current needs and opportunities:

Jessica is looking for someone to write an archive highlight for the website/blog. It doesn’t need to be one person; there could be several writers. Heather volunteered to write a piece about the American Craft Council’s archives.

Molly offered to reach out to Andrea Hoff to get responses from her for the student/alumni highlight piece.

The St. Kate’s SAA student archivist position was mentioned, and Ashley Skwiera said that, while she doesn’t have time to be the archivist, she would be willing to serve as official photographer for the group.

Jessica also has the results from her alumni survey, and is looking for ideas of how to create an online, interactive map for the St. Kate’s SAA website to show where alumni are working and what they’re doing.

Mid-year elections will be held in December. Two positions will be open:

Vice President: Alison will be graduating in December.

Media Relations Officer: Anne Thayer will be graduating.

5. It sounds like the best time for the “Preserve Your Sanity” Happy Hour is after the monthly meeting on Mondays at 7pm at Tiffany Sports Lounge. The idea was thrown out that following the November 9th would be an open house happy hour, with an invitation to the wider MLIS student body. An invitation would be extended to local archivists from TCART and other contacts to attend as well, to make it both an archives recruiting and networking event.

6. Lastly, Deb Torres suggested the idea of several SAA students submitting a poster to present at the 2016 SAA conference in Atlanta. This would be an opportunity to put the St. Kate’s chapter on the map as an active group.